


all i have to say for myself

by karples



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, The sexual tension inherent to wrestling with your on-off lover on a mat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:47:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29125956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karples/pseuds/karples
Summary: It would be so easy.In which Roy fantasizes.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Roy Harper
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	all i have to say for myself

**Author's Note:**

> title from a poem of the same name by mindy nettifee.
> 
> me: hm, didn’t i upload this in 2020?  
> me: /checks ao3  
> me: oops
> 
> written in 2017, part of the Great Google Drive Migration. it’s funny and sad looking back, because thematically so many of my WIPs from 2016-2017 rehash the same concepts. i wish i had put more energy into expanding my repertoire, but i suppose i was emotionally preoccupied :’)
> 
> takes place sometime before the titans disband during graduation day. in this fic, roy lives in a brownstone because that’s what he lived in during the outsiders, but he’s cycled through so many living spaces that i wouldn’t be surprised if a comic contemporaneous with graduation day had him living in an apartment.

Roy had Dick in a hold on the mats in the basement of his nice, nondescript, totally pedestrian brownstone, and Roy thought--at first in an upset way, and then in a rueful way--that it would be so easy to stop sparring and have very athletic, emotionally fraught sex instead. Fucking out their feelings was something of a specialty, almost like a tradition since Speedy had noticed Robin in the locker room showers and plumbed some hitherto unfathomed reservoir of courage to meet Robin’s reciprocal gaze. Roy kind of wished that he could say that he had Dick in a _fun_ hold too, except he didn’t have a fun basement set-up--just his pull-up bar and weights and dartboard and musty blue folding mats.

Not that Dick was complaining about the downgrade from the Batcave, though he probably couldn’t with Roy’s arms around his neck and Roy’s leg over his waist. Refusing to tap out, Dick twisted like an eel, his body slippery and sinuous, and grunted when Roy squeezed. Of course Dick would use how gross they were to his advantage; he was _such_ an over-competitive workout buddy.

Three guesses as to who had encouraged that particular character trait.

“Stubborn little...” Roy muttered, holding on tighter. He could feel Dick’s chest heaving, Dick’s heart pounding hard through his soaked black T-shirt. Pity it wasn’t white, but Dick had probably taken that into consideration. The first time Dick had come over in a white shirt, it had ended up stained with more than sweat; the second time, Roy had yanked it off and thrown it into a corner. And the last time, they’d flat-out misplaced it, and Dick had had to borrow another shirt from Roy to wear home.

Thus ended the era of white shirts, ushering in the era of black shirts, as if fabric dye could change that nothing divided them but skin and some cheap cotton-polyester mix. Roy had the sense that everything was possible and somehow impossible, like if they were to ask anything of each other, then they would have it, but in the only way that they knew how, which was at the moment badly--they wanted each other badly; they were bad at wanting each other. The possibilities presented themselves, an involute roadmap of superficially similar choices--Roy would ask him, or rather, Roy would _invite_ him--“You’re hot when you’re worked up, you know that?”--or maybe goading--“You drive me up the wall, you know that?”--or maybe it would unfold gently, softened by the long years that lay between them. Maybe Dick would read his hesitation, and when Roy moved to turn him over Dick would say, “Yes, like this,” and he’d peel his sweats down with one calloused finger, revealing the dark band of his jockstrap, the startlingly lovely line of his hip.

Dick released a slow breath between his teeth. Patiently, Roy shook him once, like a cat shaking a mouse.

“C’mon,” Roy said. “Give in.”

No response but a winded laugh, almost a wheeze. Its familiarity plucked a loose string in Roy’s chest, causing an ache so precise and concentrated it felt like the icy _zing!_ of a splinter buried in the flesh, in the memory, too deep to reach. Apropos of nothing Roy recalled the time that he got into a public shouting match with Corey, an ex-bandmate and occasional friend with benefits, and neither would relent, so Corey had stormed out of the music venue, slamming the car door behind him. Panicking, Roy had tried the handle, but all he’d been able to see was his furious, contorted reflection in a layer of dust and bird crap before Corey hit the gas and peeled away.

Roy had lost Corey, in more ways than one. No one that Roy had lost had ever really come back, and Roy didn’t mean _lost_ in a life-or-death way. He’d never be Speedy again, and Dick would never be Robin again, and maybe that meant Dick would never be Speedy’s Robin again, and Roy would never be Robin’s Speedy again--past selves that belonged with other past selves--and maybe that meant Arsenal’s Nightwing wouldn’t come back, and Dick would never belong with Roy again.

God, the thought filled Roy with such a crushing sense of dread that he hurried to forget it, forget it, forget it all. A guy had to be responsible about the kind of pain that he visited on himself. Besides, there was no point in mining the past for omens and answers that only the future could provide. Things like this took time.

Sufficiently exhausted, Dick tapped the mat with his index finger. “I give,” he sighed.

Roy snorted. “Sore loser.” Rather than belabor the point, he sat back on his heels and retreated to the other end of the mat. “Ready to bite the dust again?”

Shrugging, Dick blew his overgrown bangs out of his face noisily. The tension that he carried around his mobile, expressive mouth had eased, but he still seemed drawn and distracted, not that Roy was eager to pry--any mention of Bludhaven would drive Dick further into himself, to well-fortified places no one could access.

“Sure. All that matters is getting back up,” Dick replied--either a Batphorism or advice from a fortune cookie, hard to internalize, harder to practice. Even the usual note of conviction in Dick’s voice was missing. Then Dick put up his fists, feinted to the left, and lunged, a swift, fluid motion that Roy admired for the few seconds that Dick took to cross the mat and swing a knee toward Roy’s gut.

Everything they needed, Roy thought--it was all within them. They already had it, for they had themselves. And as long as Roy believed that he had all that he could get, then he could probably convince himself that he had never wanted more--that he could be happy with the established routine, the elaborate grown-up games, the black-or-white shirts.

But for better or for worse, Roy’s problem had always been in the believing.

**Author's Note:**

> “everything they needed...” is a decontextualized reference to justice league of america (2006) #11, one of my absolute favorite roy-centric issues (i hunted through so many bookstores for a used copy and in the end found it online...) i always felt like the original line itself was a double-edged sword, so i wanted to bring it in here, however briefly.
> 
> corey was one of roy’s bandmates when he played in the punk band, great frog. he and roy had a history that is briefly touched upon in titans (2008), i believe.


End file.
